$9.80

 One of my favorite pieces of authorial lore is the story of Ray Bradbury's classic novel FAHRENHEIT 451. 

Bradbury had an idea for a story, as many of us do, and had nowhere to write it. He had a newborn at home, so there were no quiet places in his house to work or a place for him to work quietly in the pre-computer 1950s depending on your point of view. He had no money for an office. Where was his friend with an IBM Selectric typewriter?

The story goes that while wandering the campus of UCLA, Bradbury heard sound of typing coming from the basement of one of the campus libraries. He found a small room filled with for-hire typewriters. For the price of a dime one could type away for thirty minutes. So off Bradbury went to return bottles or check the cracks of his couch in search of suddenly precious dimes, collecting an entire sack of them. Armed with his sack of dimes, Bradbury returned to the library basement and put his words to paper. Nine days later and ninety-eight dimes later, he completed a story called THE FIREMAN. (Finished, if my math is correct, in forty-nine hours or about five and a half hours a day!) Eventually, that story would be further fleshed out and turned into the classic we know today...a classic that got its first chance to be seen by the public thanks to a hungry young editor of a new magazine that was willing to take a chance on an unpublished novella. That editor? Hugh Hefner. 

I adore this story and the metaphor of the bag of dimes. We all have that bag of dimes inside of us, it's just whether or not we decide to use them or not on whatever you are passionate about. Maybe it's scrapbooking or smoking meat, it doesn't matter. It's potential and effort represented in dollars and cents. It's measurable and tangible. It's 98 dimes. It's 49 hours of work. And that means something to all of us.  

I'm off to go gets some dimes...who's with me?

Regarding MARADAINE

 Maradaine.

A massive, sprawling mess of a city brilliantly brought to life by Marshall Ryan Maresca. I've spent a good part of the last year in the city, meeting its denizens, sharing in their complex lives and unraveling the conspiracies that have intertwined said lives. Like the aforementioned city, "Phase One" of the Maradaine Saga is a massive, sprawling epic adventure that throws us, the reader, into the very things that make Maradaine a massive sprawling mess of a city. Split into four very different but intertwined series, the Maradaine Saga is a must read if you like fantasy, especially if you like fantasy set in a honest-to-goodness, living breathing city like Lankhmar, Ankh-Morpork, Minas Tirith, Riverside or Tar Valon.

In a weird circle of life kind of way, I started the series last year on my family vacation to Cape Cod reading about the adventures of the Thorn of Dentonhill and finished it on this year's family vacation to Cape Cod when I finished the intense and thrilling THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY. 

The series is just terrific and never lets up. In my interactions with MRM on social media, he makes comparisons to the AVENGERS and it's an apropos comparison. Maresca has done something I totally admire in mashing up genres in a brilliant way. The Thorn, our introduction to the world, is part Harry Potter, part Spiderman, part Batman while his his mission to end the rule of Willem Fenmere is more Kingpin than Joker. The Thorn series really shows us both sides of the city. 

Welling and Rainey are Sherlock and Holmes by way of Stabler and Benson but in a massive fantasy city. Welling has the brilliant, Sherlockian brain that is burdened by his late-manifesting magical abilities while Rainey tricks her way on to the force after a career in spycraft that saved her from the streets. The crimes they investigate slowly become more intertwined with those out our very heroes (very ta'veren if you ask me...and that's okay). 

We then meet the Ocean's crew of Maradaine: the Rynax brothers and the band of plucky neighbors that band together to uncover the mystery behind the fire that destroyed all of their homes that is tied to the grand conspiracy that ties them all together. The Iron Man and Hulk of our heroes (sort of), Verci and Asti plot and scheme their way though their own investigation of what caused the fire while protecting their neighborhood, especially when children start going missing. 

The Maradaine Elite, led by Tarians Dayne Heldrin and Jerinne Fendall, is the political thrillers of the Maradaine world. It's Captain America: Winter Soldier but as a fantasy. Dayne is a Boy Scout that finds himself some how always in, as the cool kids on TicToc say, the thick of it. This subseries is the scariest and one of the most prescient books I've ever read as it features the storming of a parliamentary floor by protesters not happy with the way things have gone for them. I was literally reading the book featuring these scenes on January 6th and terrified by the parallels. (There are several others in this series that will make you think he was writing this as things were going on.)

The entire series comes to a head in the final book of the Maradaine Elite series as "the people of the city" come together to stop a dragon and save the children of the city, There are some nice moments of redemption and hints of what's to come in "Phase Two." The final half of this book is intense and thrilling, like the end of any good Marvel movie. 

Fast-moving, this entire series is fast moving, mostly because you don't want to put it down.

A few months ago, I complained about "bad input" being part of my recent writing problems. The Maradaine Saga was just what I needed. I've been rolling lately finishing a rewrite on my own "Maradaine" book THE LOST SCIONS. There's a lot of shared DNA between them and that's pushed me to finish the rewrite and I think what I've written is pretty darn good. 

So my time in Maradaine is done for now. I'm moving on to the WHEEL OF TIME now. I'm on book seven, A CROWN OF SWORDS. I'm sure I'll have thoughts on it when I'm done. 

Regarding IT

 So, I finished IT today and boy was it something. I don't mean that in a bad way or in a good way, it was just something. I felt like I had to write something about the book before it faded away. For the most part, I really enjoyed the book. It's an epic story of good versus evil with the typical Kingsian trappings that prevent it from being a true masterpiece. The parts are there, but King gets in his own way most of the time. 

King frustrates me. He's really an amazing writer, I can't deny that, but there are so many frustrating aspects of his writing that prevent me from completely enjoying the story. IT was a prime example of this. It was everything I love and hate about King in one book. So let me break it down by what I loved and what I hated. 

WHAT I LOVED:

• Worldbuilding: King knows how to build a world and it's on full display here. Derry and the world around it is brilliant. 
• Mythology/Canon: King integrates this world into his "Kingverse" flawlessly while existing all on its own. He builds the mythology of It with some well done but info-dumpy sections cunningly designed as Mike's journals. 
• Characters: This might have been the strongest aspect of the novel. We spend a fair amount of time with each character, getting a feeling for them as individuals. He moves between the young and the old versions of the main characters with a deftness that's just impressive while touching on the point of views of lesser characters.  
• Pennywise: What a great villain. He's the monster that we all fear as children and as parents. His control over Derry is terrifying and that adults don't seem to notice anything adds to the tension of the story.
• Messing With Structure And Genre: King does a lot of weird but cool stuff with structure in this book. Maybe it's like other King novels, but I haven't read them all. And he messes with genre by adding Mike's journals and straight up reports of what's happening like they are from a nonfiction book about what happened. It's really kind of neat.
• Mood/Tone: This is a King specialty and it really works in spades in this book. 
• Hints: King sprinkles in bits where we see It's weaknesses throughout the book and they are rare bits of subtlety from King. If you are reading fast, you'll miss them. 

WHAT I HATED:

• Fat People: King rivals Rowling on his distaste of fat people. Besides Ben, we never meet a kind or helpful fat person. 
• Ickiness: I'm not talking about gore but King writes some things that make you squirm as you read them. He's not particularly good about writing female adolescent characters. There are some predilections there that are borderline creepy. 
• Characters: The kids are a little too hypercompetent for my taste. Sure they are scared of It, but keep it together to execute all of their plans that summer, including an underground hideout and smelting silver. My daughter is 13 and I don't see her being as efficient as the Losers' Club. 
• Make Bad Decisions For The Sake Of Plot: I dislike this trope immensely and know that it's a staple of the horror genre, but some of the decisions side characters make frustrated me. The entire Audra subplot fell flat for me as did the Tom subplot. They easily could've been cut out and the book wouldn't have been diminished. Bill didn't need additional motivation to kill It. 
• Eggs: It felt like this entire thing was just tacked on at the end because King thought of it last minute. 

THINGS I'M NOT SURE ABOUT

• Henry Bowers: I thought his arc was incomplete. King invested so much time on him that his ending felt, I don't know...off. I'm glad it was Eddie that did it though. 

IT is an amazing book. It's a huge book with a lot going on in it but it's worth the read. It can be a slog in some spots but it's worth the read. There are parts that are difficult to read because they are cringe-worthy (and I don't mean in a horror way) but if you can get past those, it's really an amazing book. 

I've got THE STAND sitting on my shelf. I listened to about half of it a while back before I quit on it (I don't remember why I did) but I may give it a try again. 

Lost In The Woods

 If you know me at all, you know that I always have something to say. But lately, I haven't had much to say. And it feels weird. 

My voice has been missing for quite awhile and I'm not sure what to do about it. I don't know if this piece is part of the solution, but I'm going to give it a try. I want to write something clever about finding my voice, but I don't have it in me. I'm tired. I'm lost in the woods searching desperately for that missing voice.

In quiet moments, I worry that I've lost my voice for good. It's terrifying. Ideas are elusive. This piece alone was a struggle to write. My friend Brian writes three pages every day. Maybe he knows where the words are. What's funny is that I've actually been writing a lot lately. 

What? That doesn't make sense, does it? How can I feel like I've lost my voice yet still be writing? I don't know. It's a paradox? 

I'm focusing on one project while peeking at another one that I've completely blown up. But something about it doesn't feel right. The writing is awkward and unwieldy. I can't get a good grip on it so it always feels like it's slipping away from me. 

Writing this felt good. I did some work. Got some thoughts on paper and on screen. For now, that's enough. 

Pea Coats, Flannel Shirts and Turtleneck Sweaters

A few weekends ago, my wife and I were watching television. Instead of catching up on WEST WING or OZARK, we stumbled upon the movie THE BROTHER'S MCMULLEN, a movie made in the 90s that reeks of the 90s. So naturally we watched it and I found myself falling into the warm embrace of nostalgia. 

It's not a bad movie. There were thematic elements that spoke to the twenty-two year old me. 1995 wasn't a good year for me. I was listless, alone and miserable. I dreamed of being a writer without putting in the work. I connected to the characters. Barry's longing for the right woman, his younger brother's struggles with his Catholicism and the lasting affect their abusive father left on them. All that kept me tuned in and I certainly could write a long piece about that, but as you can guess by the title of this, that's not what I want to do. I want to write about pea coats, flannel shirts and turtleneck sweaters. 

Now, these three items are timeless but they reached their fashion peak in the 90s, a decade's fashion that was muted when compared to the 70s or 80s. I defy you to name a better look than a turtleneck sweater and a pea coat. You know those memes where the compare the way Millennial dress to Cary Grant or Sean Connery? You notice they don't try that with a pea coat and turtleneck. 

 See, I told you. 

I always liked turtlenecks. I was a skier in high school, so I always wore turtlenecks under my sweaters. The first time I saw them combined, it was a revelation. I felt like a World War 2 British commando when I wore them.I'm sure if I looked now I could find one but I'm more of a Henley man now. 

If you know me at all, you know I love flannel. Flannel will never go away. It may wane and wax in stylishness, but it will always exist. 

Pea coats were my jam. I loved them. Still love them. I was obsessed with them before it was cool. 

The high collar. The double-breasted, wide lapels. The buttons. They are just cool. They make a statement. I've included a variation of them in every fantasy story that I write because they are that book. I've owned a pea coat. I'm a different person when I wear one. They look good on me. I can be anything when I'm wearing them. A magic-wielding warrior. A secret agent. That cool teacher that still wears his scarf after he's taken his coat off. (Okay, okay, I've been that guy.) There's power in that coat. 

Now, if I could just find a pair of Levi's Silver Tab Button-fly jeans.

Bad Input

 Growing up there was a movie called SHORT CIRCUIT. It was a classic story. A military robot is struck by lightning and it erases his programming. He escapes from the military and goes on a quest for "input." In many ways, like the robot in the movie, writers are seeking input. People are a lot like Johnny Five (the name the robot gives himself). We need input. 

I've been having trouble writing lately. I just can't seem to get traction on anything. It happens periodically. I'll take something for a test drive then scrap it. I'd love to give some big, writerly reason, but truthfully it's that the project just isn't working for me. I was discussing my troubles with my friend Brian and I mentioned that 2020 wasn't a great reading for me. Brian agreed and it got me thinking about a connection between the two. And there is. 

For you to have good output, you need good input. 

It's not rocket science. Stephen King says that you can't be a good writer without being a good reader and he's right. Unlike previous years, nothing in 2020 grabbed me in a way to move me. I can't remember the last book that did that. But it's not just reading, it's everything. I didn't even write a year in review post, because who wants to review this year?

The pandemic shut EVERYTHING down, drastically reducing our input. Movies and televisions shows screeched to a halt. Even sports for the most part were gone. There was nothing new coming in. I mean you can only watch The Mystery of the Abandoned and make sourdough so many times. With that in mind, it's not hard to see why I'm struggling with good output. My input has kind of sucked. 

So how do I fix this? 

I don't know. I mean I have ideas. Do I revisit what inspired me before or do I keep trying to find things to inspire me? I don't know if there's a good answer. I keep saying to myself that I want to write something that the thirteen-year-old me would've liked. I'm still hunting for the input to inspire that. 

For now, I just have to keep grinding and maybe I'll find it. 

Stop Arguing. No Seriously, Can We Stop Arguing?

 I'm so tired of arguments...more accurately argument writing. As a "writing teacher" (or a teacher that writes) I am frustrated by the absurd focus on argument writing in our present writing curriculum. I'm fucking tired of it. All the writing we seem to do in school now is argument writing and then we wonder why kids hate writing. 

The focus on argument writing isn't our decision, I assure you. If given the choice, any writing teacher worth their salt wouldn't use it as the entire basis for an entire writing curriculum but because some expert that likely hasn't been in a classroom in at least a decade declared it the end all, be all of writing the misguided, short-sighted people that run our state education system have decided that it should be the focus for not only English classes, but ALL classes. 

It's especially relevant to me as an English teacher since most years we give the NYS ELA Regents three times a year where the "argumentative essay" counts as 40% of the exam's grade and therefore 40% of one of their English graduation requirements. It's a major concern to many of my colleagues that teach grades 9-11 where much of the focus is preparing them for that state test. They need to focus on it or many of our students won't pass, therefore preventing their graduation and dinging us not just once but twice with the state of New York, as we are judged on graduation rate and ELA scores. It's reduced writing instruction to teaching formulas for meeting the rubric requirements and little else.

I loathe formulaic writing. (To me the words "five paragraph essay" are the equivalent of the f word and the c word having a baby raised by every racial epithet.) It binds and constricts. It also does the exact job it intends to do: create generations of rubber stamps. Everyone writes the same because that is the expectation. There is no deviation. No voice. No audience. Just the form and function. And that's killing me. Slowly. Every day. 

I don't blame my colleagues. They are doing what they need to do so we can stay on the up and up with the state. (And they do an amazing job of doing it.) Our school has so many chips stacked against it we look like poor Mike McDermott facing Teddy KGB in ROUNDERS (the first time). The thought is that we HAVE to teach formula because we have kids that are four or five grade levels behind in reading or ENL students required to achieve an impossible level of proficiency in a language they are just starting to learn. (Along with occasional learned helplessness.) It's worked to get many kids through the test but I can't help but wonder if we're doing more damage than good by doing this. I think the answer is an obvious yes. 

For kicks, I went back and pulled out the Regents I took when I was in 11th grade. (For official purposes, it was the June 1990 exam.) I can't tell you right now what I got on it and I'm not going to go to my old school to get my transcript to see. We can assume that I passed (I only took it once) and for now we can leave it at that. (Seventeen-year-old John was a different creature than forty-seven year old John, so I may not have been as successful as I think I was.) The test was vastly different and I would say that while it was more vigorous, it wasn't as constricting. I also remember that English 11 wasn't Argumentative Test Prep 11. 

There was a listening part and three reading comprehension passages....not too different from the present test.  There was a spelling section and a vocabulary section. (I would imagine that vocab was an integral part of our 11th grade material.) But it was the writing where things diverged. You were given choice in what you wrote. A respectable 55% of your grade came from writing. You had to essentially write two "essays" of about 250 words. The first writing part was a straight up literary analysis, but you were given two choices of how to frame your analysis of something you read, presumably during the school year. (I don't remember what I wrote about.) This was worth 25%. A whopping 30% was dedicated to what was basically a free composition of your choice. You were given eight options...EIGHT! They ranged from a position piece (close to an argumentative essay but not quite) to an assortment of personal narratives. (Again, I'm not sure what I wrote about, but I have a notion it was something out of the ordinary.) Not to sound like the "get off my lawn" guy, but there was an emphasis on writing that the student chose. Writing that the student wanted to do. I don't know what our students would do with that much freedom. I don't know, maybe pass?

Why did we move away from choice? Why did we hem students in with just two essays to write with absolutely no choice in what they are writing about? It's about conformity to a system. 

Last year I read a phenomenal book called WHY CAN'T THEY WRITE and it's a mind altering (if not life changing) book. One of the suggestions the author makes is  letting student write what they want. That's not to say we can't assign specific types of writing, but freedom of choice is paramount to a student's success in writing. We pontificate about differentiation and culturally responsive teaching yet when it comes to writing we will square peg-round hole our students for the sake of a stupid test meant to shape everyone into a round hole. It's beyond frustrating. Teachers are handcuffed by the belief of whichever member of the Board of Regents decided this was the most efficient way to measure student success in writing. Again, it's no wonder our kids hate to write. 

Most of my colleagues think I'm nuts. I can HEAR their eyes rolling when I open my mouth during online meetings. Maybe I should just follow the advice I've been given most of my life and just shut my mouth. 

Yeah, I doubt that too.